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"High marks for China’s AIDS shift"
The
Star (www.thestar.com.my)
(24/02/07)
Medical journal praises new policy
PARIS: China has firmly grasped the challenge of fighting AIDS, thanks to an
array of programmes to tackle HIV infection at the source and to a watershed
in political thinking, a paper published in The Lancet says.
The lengthy paper – authored by five Chinese and Western public health
experts – amounts to a rare round of applause for Beijing from a leading
international medical journal.
It points to the government's needle-exchange and methadone initiatives for
drug users, safe-sex awareness campaigns among gays, routine HIV testing
among at-risk parts of the population and free drugs for people infected
with the AIDS virus.
“These bold programmes have emerged from a process of gradual and prolonged
dialogue and collaboration between officials at every level of government,
researchers, service providers, policymakers and politicians, and have led
to decisive action,” the paper said.
The authors say China's initial response was to try to contain and isolate
AIDS cases but this policy failed, for it may have encouraged people with
HIV to conceal their status, thus adding to the problem of tracking
reservoirs of the virus.
One of the turning points was a 1997 workshop that gathered US and Chinese
health experts and representatives from international health agencies, the
paper said.
That helped shift the country towards a policy of encouragement rather than
coercion, and used scientific evidence rather than moralism to guide the
campaign. — AFP
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